


He Calls Himself a Raven But He Belongs to Her Before The Sky

by Stubbornness_and_Spite



Category: Maleficent (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M, Families of Choice, Found Family, Movie: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, POV Diaval (Disney), discovering definitions of self, retelling of Mistress of Evil with slight changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 11:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stubbornness_and_Spite/pseuds/Stubbornness_and_Spite
Summary: There is no one whose side he’d rather be at. Even as he calls himself a raven, he knows that he is hers first and foremost, whatever form that may take. He laughs with her and feels no fear even as she burns with rage. He’ll step in front of her sword as many times as it takes to take the burden of regret off her shoulders.He calls himself a raven, but he belongs to her before the sky.
Relationships: Aurora & Diaval & Maleficent, Aurora & Diaval (Disney), Aurora & Maleficent (Disney), Diaval & Maleficent (Disney), Diaval/Maleficent (Disney)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 299





	He Calls Himself a Raven But He Belongs to Her Before The Sky

There is no one whose side he’d rather be at. Even as he calls himself a raven, he knows that he is hers first and foremost, whatever form that may take. He laughs with her and feels no fear even as she burns with rage. He’ll step in front of her sword as many times as it takes to take the burden of regret off her shoulders. 

She set him free years ago as they flew together for the first time. He laughed in her face and told her that the raven he had been was dead, and the being he was now was happy. She didn’t understand, but she didn’t make him stop calling her ‘mistress’ either, so he didn’t try to explain. He didn’t know how to tell her that he belonged to her, that there was no life debt that kept him bound. He didn’t know how to tell her he loved her. 

She had told him that true love didn’t exist. He knows that she now believes in parental love, in familial love, but as he watches her gaze at Aurora’s beloved with disgust, he knows that she still doesn’t believe in romantic love. So he only voices his love for Aurora and lets his love for Maleficent remain silent. He has a family of sorts, and he will make that be enough. He will keep watching his daughter grow up and keep tempering her mother’s wrath, and they will find their happiness. 

Aurora is the one to suggest to Maleficent that she let him transform by himself. Maleficent had played it off as a convenience, but when he felt the open channel to her magic she had granted him, he’d transformed into a raven right then to keep from kissing her. She may not love him, but she does trust him, and she wants him by her side, and she had opened her soul to him. She’d opened up a vein and tied their hearts together, chamber by chamber. 

~

Then they’re at a dinner party for their daughter, and it’s clear they’re not wanted. But they smile for Aurora and Phillip and play nice as they’re served bird with iron utensils. Maleficent seems as sickened than him at the sight of the meal, and his heart swells. He calls himself a raven, but he belongs to her before the sky. He doesn’t try to stop her when Maleficent’s fire finally burns because he’s raging too, and he’s barely keeping himself from turning into a dragon and adding his flames to hers. 

But then she’s gone, and he’s bouncing into a man, unable to turn back. He can’t feel her magic at the end of his rope anymore, and he screams for her. Why is he a man if her magic is gone? He should be a raven, shouldn’t he? Isn’t that all he is now, a bird that outlived its lifespan by the grace of a faerie? 

He makes his way home as a man and wonders if this is Maleficent’s last act of spite, to turn him into a man so he can never be free of her. Then he realizes that even if she did curse this on him as she fell, that she probably wasn’t thinking of him at all. She never was. She thought of Aurora first, always, even when she was furious with the girl, she thought of Aurora first. If Maleficent thought she was dying(he refuses to believe she’s dead. Gone, maybe. Hurt, sure. Thinking she’s dying, probably. But dead? Not Maleficent.) then maybe she’d cast him into a man’s form so Aurora wouldn’t lose both her parents in one day. 

He finds their daughter screaming for her mother and tries to comfort her, but she’s a woman now, and he only knows how to comfort children(and one very specific woman), so his words fall empty. She leaves thinking that her mother is still evil enough to curse a man into a sleep like death because his wife taunted her. Maleficent is still vengeful, but she is the kind of vengeful that would send him to claw the woman’s eyes out in her sleep, not curse the husband she clearly does not love. 

He is lost without her. He feels like a sail with no ship, a flag with no pole. He considers jumping from a cliff, feeling the wind against him once more before letting his unnatural existence come to an end. He doesn’t. He waits for her instead, and as the days pass and she does not come, he loses hope. If she lives(and she does), then she must have abandoned him. She must have finally realized that she deserves more than he can give her. Then he remembers Aurora, and he worries again because Maleficent would never leave her. 

The announcement of Aurora and Phillip’s wedding crashes over the Moors, and he remembers who he is. He is Diaval, Maleficent’s demon. He is her eyes and her ears. He has been her wings. He is whatever she needs. Aurora is not in the Moors. Maleficent is gone. He is what is left. He lifts his head high and calls out to the people he has made his own over the past twenty years. He beams with pride as they make their way to Ulstead, and they let him lead them. He is an extension of those they have followed for years, and he will be that with pride and joy.

The guards tear him from his people, and he pushes towards them with cries that he is a raven because he doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t say that he is Maleficent’s because they don’t know what that means here. They also hate her here, but he would walk into an army of Maleficent’s enemies and declare himself hers without hesitation. Human soldiers raised with human customs don’t know what it means that he belongs to Maleficent. So he protests that he is a raven as they push him away and herd his people through the doors. 

He scales the walls to get to them, and when he finds Aurora fighting futilely with a door braced shut he knows he was right to fight to get in. Clouds of red explode in the sky above him, and he smells death. It smells like flowers and wet bark and he feels sick. The sky is red as he pulls at the braced door with Aurora and it won’t move. He curses this body that has become his own, and that’s when he sees it. The sky flashes green, and an electric current runs through him as his mistress flies above. 

With a breath, he’s a bear, and he can feel the feathers that reflected his raven’s body on every form except the first one Maleficent had given him. He tears the doors open, and his people flee. Aurora waves them out as the smell of death, stronger now that the doors are open and his nose is no longer human, overwhelms him. He thinks he staggers away. He thinks he fights a few soldiers off of the fleeing faeries. The next thing that he knows, Maleficent is dead.  
It feels different this time. He feels the connection between them start to crumble as bits of it flake away. He clings desperately to a tunnel that isn’t a tunnel anymore and he’s just a raven, the mind and body and life that she gave him fading away. He’s not sure if he remembers his name.

Then she’s back and their connection is stronger than ever before because his mistress is a bird now. She knows what it is to be a bird now. He grins manically at the destruction she wreaks and the sky clears.

He stands. His human form seeming more natural than he had realized after being suddenly transformed back into just a raven. He makes his way across the courtyard in a daze. He sees her standing by Aurora and he feels complete. Her magic runs through him and he feels whole. He is not a raven. He is hers. 

She tells him she missed him and he’s taken aback. He sees the vulnerability on her face and grins at her. He asks if she hit her head and she snaps that she did. He beams at her and it hits him like a tornado that he loves her. He wants to kiss her. More than that he wants to wrap his arms around her and hold her close to him where he knows she’s safe and not leaving him behind. 

But there’s Aurora and she’s getting married. But there’s Aurora and she’s apologizing and they’re forgiving. But there’s Aurora and she needs her mother. There’s always Aurora and he can’t begrudge Maleficent for putting her first because he always puts her first too. She’s their daughter. She’s their fledgling. She needs them. She’s just a child. 

He steps back and lets them have their moment. They need this. He and Aurora have always been secure in their love. She’s his daughter. He’s her father. There is nothing to doubt. Maleficent doubts and fears and worries. 

He finds himself behind a grand tree grown by Maleficent that makes him think of home. Aurora comes up behind him. 

“Diaval,” she calls to him. She walks over and hesitates in front of him. “I wanted to ask you if—” she stops and looks at the ground. 

He laughs. “Aurora, I’ve watched over you since you were born. You can ask me anything.”

She smiles. “It’s a human tradition,” she says softly, “For the bride’s father to give her away at her wedding.”

He understands what she means and his smile splits his face. He lunges forward and wraps his arms around her. She hugs him back with a little less ferocity. Then her hesitance hits him and he understands. He doesn’t stop hugging her.

“You know I love you, Aurora. You’re my daughter.” He presses a soft kiss into her hair. “But are you asking me because it’s tradition or because you actually want me to walk you down the aisle?”

She doesn’t answer and he knows. He holds his little girl a moment longer and lets her go. He holds her shoulders and looks her in the eyes. “Go ask your mother, little one,” he murmurs.  
She slips under his arms and hugs him tightly again. “Thank you, Godfather.” She lets him go and dashes through the low hanging branches of the tree to find Maleficent.

He stares after her wondering when she grew up and how she did it so well.

~  
The wedding is beautiful. Maleficent and Aurora look beautiful walking down the aisle. He smiles as he tells Maleficent to let her go. Aurora and Philip exchange their vows in a way that is so them it’s heartbreaking. They cut off the officiate in their eagerness to be wed. They kiss and he can feel how much Maleficent aches for her little beastie who is not so little anymore. He looks at her and she’s smiling and suddenly he realizes that his excuses are gone. Maleficent believes in love now. Aurora doesn’t need them in the way she did before. He has no more excuses.

So he spins around and kisses her. She stiffens and he thinks he might die, but he knows her. Magic ties them together and he can feel that she is surprised but not repulsed. His hands cup her face and he kisses her like he’s wanted to for so long. 

He pulls away and she hasn’t moved. She doesn’t move. He drops his arms. He realizes that this is not such a bad way to die and he moves to her. He tucks his head in the bend of her shoulder and her neck and wraps his arms tightly around her.

“I love you,” he whispers against her skin. “I love you.”

She says his name like she needs him as much as he needs her and he pulls her closer to him, his fingers entwined in her feathers. Her hands grip his back with such force that her nails slit the back of his jacket and rake down his skin. She brings them abruptly up to latch in his hair and she claims his mouth. 

He squawks and she laughs.

He is her wings and they will never stop flying.


End file.
